vulnerability

But the compulsive overachievement of today's elite college students - the sense that they need to keep running as fast as they can - is not the only thing that keeps them from forming the deeper relationships that might relieve their anguish. Something more insidious is operating, too: a resistance to vulnerability, a fear of looking like the only one who isn't capable of handling the pressure. These are young people who have always succeeded at everything, in part by projecting the confidence that they always will. Now, as they get to college, the stakes are higher and the competition fiercer. Everybody thinks that they are the only one who's suffering, so nobody says anything, so everybody suffers. Everyone feels like a fraud; everybody thinks that everybody else is smarter than they are.

Like a Columbus of the heart, mind and soul I have hurled myself off the shores of my own fears and limiting beliefs to venture far out into the uncharted territories of my inner truth, in search of what it means to be genuine and at peace with who I really am. I have abandoned the masquerade of living up to the expectations of others and explored the new horizons of what it means to be truly and completely me, in all my amazing imperfection and most splendid insecurity.

Another great example of the power of vulnerability -- this time in a corporation -- is the leadership approach taken by Lululemon's CEO, Christine Day. In a video interview with CNN Money, Day explained that she was once a very bright, smart executive who "majored in being right." Her transformation came when she realized that getting people to engage and take ownership wasn't about "the teling" but about letting them come into the idea in a purpose-led way, and that her job was creating the space for others to perform. She chracterized this change as the shift from "having the best idea or problem solving" to "being the best leader of people.

We are like puzzle pieces who are perfectly suited to make a giant picture together, but we are assembling ourselves in the dark.

When we suffer in silence, we think that we are alone, different, separate. When we share our stories of suffering, we find that we are the same.

As is often the case when I travel, my vulnerability -- like not knowing what the hell I'm going to do upon arrival -- makes me more open to outside interactions than I might be when I'm at home and think I know best what needs to be done. On the road, serendipity is given space to enter my life.

The intimacy that arises in listening and speaking truth is only possible if we can open to the vulnerability of our own hearts. Breathing in, contacting the life that is right here, is our first step. Once we have held ourselves with kindness, we can touch others in a vital and healing way.

The tremendous danger is that this belief - that genuine happiness comes only from pleasant feelings - becomes a strong motivation to stay closed to anything unpleasant. But by staying closed to all unpleasantness, we also stay closed to our own wellspring of compassion.

No one reaches out to you for compassion or empathy so you can teach them how to behave better. They reach out to us because they believe in our capacity to know our darkness well enough to sit in the dark with them.

Colonel Henry Blake, a surgeon: "I can paint a barn with someone else's blood. I just can't stand to see my own.

Fall open. Break open. Sit with others' openness. Let love be your medicine.

One of the most important things you can do on this earth is to let people know they are not alone.

Our God is vulnerable. He is.This might be striking to some. The prominent view of God is strong, mighty, courageous - not vulnerable. God?Vulnerable? God didn__ only hang naked on a wooden cross, and He didn__ only do that because He loved us - but He did it all first. He made the first move. He initiated the relationship. He didn__ wait for us to clean ourselves up."For while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." The foundation of our relationship with God is vulnerability.

Wholeness is birthed through vulnerability and sensitivity, which is often conceived in brokenness. Jesus taught me this.

It__ the hard things that break; soft things don__ break. It was an epiphany I had today and I just wonder why it took me so very, very long to see it! You can waste so many years of your life trying to become something hard in order not to break; but it__ the soft things that can__ break! The hard things are the ones that shatter into a million pieces!

Sure, you can break a man. Bend his will, even, but be careful with the ones that break easily. Those are the ones you have to keep a close eye on. Those are the ones that play possum and hide in the shadows. Just waiting for their time to strike! That's when you're most vulnerable. When you're surrounded by friends.

Incarnation is good news not because it offers us a way out of the mess of this world, but because it shows us what God's love looks like here and now.

Those who do not care, escape the anguish of mourning but never know the delights of love. The meaning of life forever eludes them.